Austerity Urbanism

Developed as a provisional formulation (and working concept) in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, austerity urbanism refers to the localized effects of the significant retrenchment and restructuring of public expenditures and services in the ensuing period, particularly in Europe and North America. Originating as a banking crisis, the Wall Street crash of 2008 was rapidly translated into a much wider crisis for the (social and welfare) state, for public-sector financing, and for (local) government service delivery, as the widely adopted policy of austerity involved expenditure cutbacks, often devolved to subnational or municipal tiers of government, along with a renewed emphasis on public-sector downsizing, privatization, outsourcing, and fee-for-service arrangements. In this way, both the costs and burdens of the crisis and its extended aftermath were “downloaded” to the local level, as indeed would be a disproportionate share of the political blame for the crisis, in the form of renewed accusations of municipal profligacy, political corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and abuses of labor union power. Austerity urbanism entailed regressive redistribution both in social and spatial terms, as the costs of adjustment were disproportionally shouldered by economically lagging cities, some of which were taken into financial receivership, and by low-income residents, racialized minorities, the elderly, and those reliant on public services. While austerity programs are often designed and activated in national (or state) capitals, it is cities that usually bear the brunt, where austerity bites. Far from a blanket condition, austerity urbanism was geographically uneven from the start. Austerity measures were among the principal policy responses of European governments in the wake of the crisis, particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, austerity was not named in the same way in mainstream political discourse but nevertheless exhibited a parallel form, since pressures for spending restraint were distributed “downward” to state and local governments, some of the most explicit manifestations of which were the bankruptcy declarations of Detroit, Michigan, and several Californian cities. Meanwhile, “ordinary” austerity—in the form of generalized financial restraint, social-service rationalization, and reductions in local-government employment—was experienced more widely, if again unevenly. Critical scholars understand austerity urbanism as a distinctive moment in ongoing processes of neoliberalization, the project to privatize and downsize the state, to embrace entrepreneurial values and metrics, to introduce market tests and logics, and to “responsibilize” cities, households, and individual citizens. As such, the post-2008 wave of austerity urbanism can be located within the wider field of neoliberal reforms and transformations, dating back to the 1970s. But if earlier periods of budgetary restraint and municipal restructuring had targeted the institutions (and principles) of the Keynesian welfare state, the more recent implementation of austerity measures has occurred in the context of an already neoliberalized governmental (and intergovernmental) system.